The -hadoop option is important. At this point I haven’t created an automatic Dumbo install script, so you’ll have to install Dumbo by hand each time you launch the cluster. Fortunately installation is easy.

There was a minor hiccup that required the Amazon guys to pull the AMI with Dumbo support, but it’s back now and they seem to be confident that Dumbo support is going to remain available from now on. They are also still planning to make things even easier by providing an automatic Dumbo installation script.

As an aside, it’s worth mentioning that a bug in Hadoop Streaming got fixed in the process of adding Dumbo support to EMR. I can’t wait to see what else the Amazon guys have up their sleeves.